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talkpolitics Well, in the last few days, things have escalated very rapidly indeed with North Korea, illustrating ultimately that the world escaped the tragedy of a Cold War nuclear crisis to get the farce that may well finally end the nuclear taboo with North Korea and Donald Trump's America.
First, North Korea genuinely stunned me with this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/north-korea-now-making-missile-ready-nuclear-weapons-us-analysts-say/2017/08/08/e14b882a-7b6b-11e7-9d08-b79f191668ed_story.html?utm_term=.94f1bc1e8200
The Cold War superpowers took a decade or two from developing the simple Hiroshima-Nagasaki and Joe-1 kind of bombs to developing first ICBMs and then putting atomic bombs on them. North Korea has done so in record time, even if the bombs are no larger than those used in WWII, meaning in relative terms they're rather crude and primitive by comparison to the continent-annihilating weapons the USA and Russia, at least, have. In doing this, North Korea has profoundly changed the nature of the crisis with its weaponry and for the first time is a rather crude and cumbersome small state with the potential power to menace a big one.
And as is illustrated here, the gap between the WWII-style bombs North Korea has and those same continent annihilating weapons of apocalyptic scale and power is a real one:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a23306/nuclear-bombs-powerful-today/
The Castle Bravo test and the Tsar Bomb set records, but they're actually relatively speaking par for the course with modern firepower.
What this in turn means is that North Korea gets one bite out of the USA, assuming the missile hits or doesn't hit (and even a failed nuclear launch still ends the 'nobody actually uses the damned things' taboo for the duration). That bite will be ironically proportionate to the USA's own use of the weapons at the end of WWII in devastation. The USA will hit North Korea back (and if it fired one at China or Russia or the UK or France or Pakistan they too would do this exact same thing) with a weapon far more powerful than that fired at it.
North Korea can give the USA a nuclear tick bite, the USA can literally annihilate every human in North Korea. Does this make the situation less threatening? Hell fucking no, it makes it far more deadly.
In retaliation for North Korea developing these missiles, however, in standard fashion Dorito Benito made a statement that makes things still worse and is why frankly I had trouble sleeping last night:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/09/politics/trump-fire-fury-improvise-north-korea/index.html
He promised 'fire and fury the likes of which the world has never seen' (and insofar as nobody has used modern nuclear weapons in war, yet, he's actually telling the truth for once).
This statement should be very familiar because it's an echo of Truman's statement at Potsdam in 1945 about 'prompt and utter destruction':
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Hiroshima/Potsdam.shtml
Nuclear war with North Korea, and a President who was a source of satire for old cartoons and the basis of the villain in an 80s sci-fi film.
This would be the scenario of a grimdark satire in any other reality, but it is the one that actually exists.
And the worst bit is that it would literally matter not at all who won the Presidential election in the USA here. North Korea was developing these weapons since the George W. Bush years. It ended the armistice of Panmunjom in 2013, at one stroke ending all diplomatic possibilities it could use in favor of a cycle that ultimately only ends in a nuclear exchange. Other Presidents wouldn't use Trumanesque rhetoric posturing about nuclear weapons, perhaps, but the broader geopolitical picture would be no different, nor would the existential threat of a nuclear war.
And when, not if, the cycle continues to escalate unless somehow it's broken and neither Trump nor North Korea seem to care overmuch to do that, the nuclear taboo will finally be shattered.
And when it is, the chain leading to a global nuclear exchange of some sort shifts up tremendously quick as the Chinese are unlikely to accept a US nuclear strike next to their border without flexing their own arsenal, and the Chinese lack the military ability to deal as much damage to the USA as it can do to it. Scary times, to be sure.
First, North Korea genuinely stunned me with this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/north-korea-now-making-missile-ready-nuclear-weapons-us-analysts-say/2017/08/08/e14b882a-7b6b-11e7-9d08-b79f191668ed_story.html?utm_term=.94f1bc1e8200
The Cold War superpowers took a decade or two from developing the simple Hiroshima-Nagasaki and Joe-1 kind of bombs to developing first ICBMs and then putting atomic bombs on them. North Korea has done so in record time, even if the bombs are no larger than those used in WWII, meaning in relative terms they're rather crude and primitive by comparison to the continent-annihilating weapons the USA and Russia, at least, have. In doing this, North Korea has profoundly changed the nature of the crisis with its weaponry and for the first time is a rather crude and cumbersome small state with the potential power to menace a big one.
And as is illustrated here, the gap between the WWII-style bombs North Korea has and those same continent annihilating weapons of apocalyptic scale and power is a real one:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a23306/nuclear-bombs-powerful-today/
The Castle Bravo test and the Tsar Bomb set records, but they're actually relatively speaking par for the course with modern firepower.
What this in turn means is that North Korea gets one bite out of the USA, assuming the missile hits or doesn't hit (and even a failed nuclear launch still ends the 'nobody actually uses the damned things' taboo for the duration). That bite will be ironically proportionate to the USA's own use of the weapons at the end of WWII in devastation. The USA will hit North Korea back (and if it fired one at China or Russia or the UK or France or Pakistan they too would do this exact same thing) with a weapon far more powerful than that fired at it.
North Korea can give the USA a nuclear tick bite, the USA can literally annihilate every human in North Korea. Does this make the situation less threatening? Hell fucking no, it makes it far more deadly.
In retaliation for North Korea developing these missiles, however, in standard fashion Dorito Benito made a statement that makes things still worse and is why frankly I had trouble sleeping last night:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/09/politics/trump-fire-fury-improvise-north-korea/index.html
He promised 'fire and fury the likes of which the world has never seen' (and insofar as nobody has used modern nuclear weapons in war, yet, he's actually telling the truth for once).
This statement should be very familiar because it's an echo of Truman's statement at Potsdam in 1945 about 'prompt and utter destruction':
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Hiroshima/Potsdam.shtml
Nuclear war with North Korea, and a President who was a source of satire for old cartoons and the basis of the villain in an 80s sci-fi film.
This would be the scenario of a grimdark satire in any other reality, but it is the one that actually exists.
And the worst bit is that it would literally matter not at all who won the Presidential election in the USA here. North Korea was developing these weapons since the George W. Bush years. It ended the armistice of Panmunjom in 2013, at one stroke ending all diplomatic possibilities it could use in favor of a cycle that ultimately only ends in a nuclear exchange. Other Presidents wouldn't use Trumanesque rhetoric posturing about nuclear weapons, perhaps, but the broader geopolitical picture would be no different, nor would the existential threat of a nuclear war.
And when, not if, the cycle continues to escalate unless somehow it's broken and neither Trump nor North Korea seem to care overmuch to do that, the nuclear taboo will finally be shattered.
And when it is, the chain leading to a global nuclear exchange of some sort shifts up tremendously quick as the Chinese are unlikely to accept a US nuclear strike next to their border without flexing their own arsenal, and the Chinese lack the military ability to deal as much damage to the USA as it can do to it. Scary times, to be sure.
(no subject)
Date: 10/8/17 18:12 (UTC)You know that, and I know that. Does that Stalinist dictator with yes men generals know that and after he purged them would any of them risk their very literal lives by telling him?
(no subject)
Date: 10/8/17 18:58 (UTC)Tillerson is going to have to be in perfect "Sir Humphrey" mode though....
"With greatest respect, Mr President...."
Oh gods. Lets go and write this. If the world goes up in flames, this could be a Black Mirror moment.